Oh Yes– when she was younger she thought, going to the hospital with pneumonia was a real treat–she did not take her knitting to the hospital and the nurse brought her tea in the night when she was crying because she wasn’t home looking after the babies and because the cool white, clean sheets felt so good and, in the hospital everyone seemed to be looking after her and she wasn’t looking after anyone at all.

On top of Tod Mountain

memoir without verbs
a challenge

Snow
a crystal touch on a baby’s face
four feet of white across a frozen land
purple moon shadows under pines
diamonds on tree limbs in the morning sun
weapons for school boys
walls in the school yard
my tracks across a field and those of a hare
a hundred telephone poles along my way to school
After deep winter’s darkness
spring lake
and summer field
acres of riches
the black earth
dust
dust
and yellow harvest
combines
tiny harvest mice
The table full:
potatoes, pumpkin, corn, beans , cabbage, strawberries, saskatoons, blue berries,
raspberries, choke cherries, pincherries, cranberries, carrots, turnips six inches across, bitter horseradish, beets.
Time for the fall supper
November snow

Waiting for spring

tiny  summer orchids

brighten

my memory

A yellow lady slipper

The light that guides one home

A jar etched with your name
a single petal from a faded rose
a golden leaf
two pebbles from a distant island shore
a ring too small
a button covered with blue silk
a single pearl from a necklace
broken long ago

Moon shadow
purple pines
darken the snow

On her birthday
in pink satin
with her new helmet
and her new scooter
my lady rides

Tree
deep rooted in the earth
laced into  sky
map of generations
outliving all
cliche of truth
in a hundred languages.

Dark blue skies in the evening light

Let wayward fingers
prize words out of the ether
minus thought
and drift on the edge
across the final bar
that fences the horizon
only the white flag
signals trust
I hoist the blank page
and hope
there are words, and wordlings
far beyond my minding

The ravages of time–a cliche
but she knew that was the only way
she saw the mirror

All other words
she wrote on candy wrappers
tossed into the sea

As the crone sat dreaming beside the summer sea

Her dreams were all of long ago

the tiny country store, grain elevators, the old gas pump, the post box

where Jenny Wren lived in summer.

The Postmaster, whose sign said “Bird in Residence, do not disturb.”

Inside the warm stove where local farmers came to gather mail, tell stories

and fill the air with pipe smoke

while the child hidden behind the counter stored their tales. Fran

My drawing for Cronelogic and friends at Rainbow Beach

The words slip into a darkling cave

Bats hang in bunches from a stone shelf
I can go no further lest I lose the sun

I dare not use the lamp he gave me
Creatures that live in darkness fear the light
but I was born in the morning and this place refuses me